On the 12th, 13th, 19th and 20th of july, b12 will present „asteroids“, performed by the participants of the performance projects. this new module presents new creations from seven mind-blowing choreographers that will premiere at the dock 11 theater in berlin.

you will engage in a rigorous process of unearthing your inner wants and needs, which will be made use of to help the performers develop characters that bond psychological and emotional states to physical ones. through combustive prompts, you will find yourself in a maelstrom of situations and feelings, compelling each scene to escalate into a mad wilderness of movement. immersed in the thick tension of the group, we will enter the abyss. not the emptiness of the void, but the fractal complexity of a dream within a dream. a process of reduplication will, like standing between two mirrors, force us to face the infinite extension of ourselves and our actions. doppelgängers, soul mates, and throngs of people will be seduced into wild mind-melds. you know that i know that you know that this is really happening. shannon's experiences working with johannes wieland as well as with the artists of vim vigor, has influenced her approach to raw physical movement, the collaborative creative process and life. unabashedly personal, each work enters a terrain of human failure, triumph, and will.

"i will drift through space and will not understand my world. i will drift through space and will not understand yours. so i will re-write myself. i will dissolve into the particles i am made out of and re-organise them. i will re-create myself and become all of you, including you, and will invite the solar system to be my ego. i will be new. very new."

"how do people interact?" i wish to create an atmosphere where every individual depends on the collective, while each participant’s creative input adds to the quality of the group’s performance. we will focus on two basic complementary choreographic devices used in most of en-knap's performances: 3q and open parts, both based on the use of chance, either in the structuring or in the interpretation. for this process participants need to be willing to collaborate closely, have quick reactions, as well as an open mind and a wish to share proposed and individual movement material. 3q is a choreographic device defined as a system of structured coincidence. it is based on the motions of different expressive qualities and will be determined by the use of fixed music structures which we will analyse beforehand. the 3q system functions in groups, where one person takes the role of the leader and switches between time-limited sequences of pre-determined motion, or 'units', while the other dancers react to the leader's performance using three options, which are pre-chosen by throwing of the dice. open parts are based on a set of rules, while the element of chance is present in the interpretation. participants are instantly composing the relationships between each other, the movement material, space and time.

embracing the creative process as a chaotic, vulnerable, fragile, violent, exciting, intimate and volatile experience, we will come together take a deep breath and simply go to work. i hope to create a space that enables performers who want to work, who want to find new languages and want to dig deeper to be able to do their best work. i believe any medium is available at any moment and we will work unconstrained by any personal or exterior expectations of the right way. the way we work will be the right way because its the way we work. i hope to foster an atmosphere of support and safety amongst the company so that we can interrogate the fundamental conflicts of the theatrical itself:

-friction between the performer and the content.
-contradiction between the awareness of moving in space and the internalization needed to realise a character.
-conflict of sound and action and imagery.
-hostility between the controlled atmosphere of the theatre and the unbridled chaos of human nature.

we will examine how the abstraction of movement can be contextualized to inform meaning and where the power of ambiguity can be harnessed to provoke thought. the outcome might not be the objective but where we look at conflict we might find resolution.

this performance project is about the dynamic play between the individual and the collective. we will play with the power of the group and see how this creates vulnerability in one, and strength in another. we all try to be unique, even if it’s not intentional- everyone wants to be special. we live in a world in which we wait to be accepted and this only generates pressure and dishonesty - especially to oneself. we resent ourselves the way people would like to see us, but it’s not really who we really are. the 'soul' is important because it proposes a realm beyond the body, beyond the materialistic- the things which we do and do not see, but they are there.

life is a constant chain of beginnings and endings: cycles, where repetition- amongst other things (emotions for example) generates change. one can see a performance from the same perspective. as individuals and as a collective we come together for a clearly set amount of time during which we create a sphere in order to prepare ourselves to be transported out of the daily grind and into a place of distillation. a place where we perhaps discover something new about experiencing things, or even become lost for an instant. to allow yourself to let go and live the moment. i am interested in how, we as human beings, are so often affected emotionally and physically by our constant state of transition. to dance beyond the act of dancing, and push the boundaries of physical and mental ability. how far can it be driven, how surprised can you be about it, and how that state of mind and body leads yet again into new beginnings and endings, resulting in a raw, instinctive, strongly animalistic and yet poetic movement and theatrical quality. working with a live musician, who himself also reacts to what is part of, by accentuating and/or triggering states, will aid and strongly stimulate us on our journey exploration.

shannon gillen named among new york’s top 20 artists by brooklyn magazine, shannon gillen has had an extensive career as a dancer and choreographer in nyc and europe. she was a member of the johannes wieland company based at staatstheater kassel in germany; she has won commissions from mainfranken theater würzburg, the international solo-tanz theater festival in stuttgart (taking 3rd prize), the tif theater in kassel, and was selected to be the choreographer-in-residence for think big at the staatsoper hannover. upon returning to the usa, shannon founded vim vigor as the home for her collaborative choreographic and educational endeavors. the company's creative and educational work has been commissioned across the usa, canada, central america, south america and europe. notable festivals and venues where shannon’s work has been commissioned include danceworks at the lobero theatre, springboard danse festival, hubbard street 2, phelan for new york fashion week, gibney dance company, new york live arts, prisma festival, judson church, pulse art fair (art basel), bryant park presents, nyc’s river to river festival, the joyce theater, and jacob’s pillow.

luke murphy is an irish performer and choreographer working internationally. he has performed and collaborated with ultima vez (2014-2018 booty looting, spiritual unity and in spite of wishing and wanting) punchdrunk (2009-2017, original cast member of sleep no more boston, new york city, shanghai and the drowned man london) kate weare company (2011-2014), pavel zustiak palissimo company (2011-2013) and many others. since 2012 he has created six evening length works for his own attic projects in ireland. creating and performing original works across ireland, uk and usa and working across the mediums of dance, theatre, film, installation and site specific performance. he curates and directs the catch8 workshop series in ireland and is working towards the opening of a new residency centre in west cork. www.atticprojects.com

lali ayguadé & guilhem chatirlali ayguadé attended parts in brussels for four years. after her training, she joined publik eye company in denmark, directed at that time by carmen mehnert. in 2003, lali joined the akram khan company as a full time member creating and performing in the productions: “kaash”, “ma” and “bahok”. she has worked with roberto olivan in the production “homeland” and with hofesh shechter in the productions “in your rooms”, “cult” and “the art of not looking back”. she has also worked with marcos morau from la veronal. in 2005, lali choreographed “twice read” together with the slovak dancer and choreographer anton lachky. in 2015, she created her first full-length work, “kokoro”- a quartet which was co-produced by mercat de les flors and temporada; this was the initiation of a full-evening dance-theatre trilogy. the following year, she co-created “de camino al otro” with the acrobat julian sicard. lali is currently working on the second part of the trilogy, “iu an mi” co-produced by mercat de les flors,bolzano danza festival and temporada alta. in 2010, she was nominated as “exceptional dancer” for the critics awards of london, and in 2014 as “best creator”. in 2016, she was also nominated as “best dancer” for the recomana cat critic awards in barcelona. she created the short movie “timecode”, which was awarded the ''palme d’or'' at festival de cannes, the ''goya award'', the ''gaudi award'' and was nominated at the oscars 2016 among others. lali shares her technique and the investigation linked to her creations around the world through workshops.

guilhem chatir born in toulouse in 1993, guilhem chatir began his performance career in hip-hop and circus at the conservatoire à rayonnement régional de toulouse. in 2010, he joined the conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de paris where created short pieces while taking part in choreographic laboratories and performed in ‘sacrée printemps’ by cristiana morganti. in 2013, he joined anne teresa de keersmeaker’s school, parts where he learned the repertoire of trisha brown and rosas. after leaving school, he covered a role in ‘what the body does not remember’ with wim vanderkeybus’s company ultima vez in 2015, and in that same year he had his own role in the piece ‘in spite of wishing and wanting’. in 2017, he initiated a collaboration with lali ayguadé on the duet ‘zero point’.

johannes wieland hails from berlin, earned his bfa at the amsterdam university of the arts and worked in various companies with an extensive array of choreographers, before going to perform as a principal at the béjart ballet, lausanne. ready for a radical change, he then relocated to new york city where he received his mfa in contemporary dance and choreography at nyu’s tisch school of the arts in 2002. his company ”johannes wieland”, founded in new york that same year, facilitated the foundation for his body of work and since 2006, he holds a permanent position as the artistic director and choreographer at the staatstheater kassel. aside from choreographing and teaching for companies and universities, his critically acclaimed pieces have been invited to tour internationally for festivals and events. he is a 1st prize winner of the “kurt jooss prize”, and has been awarded numerous other prizes, recognitions, scholarships and grants. he is a nominee for the german theater prize “der faust” in 2016, for his creation “you will be removed”.

iztok kovač is a choreographer, teacher and dancer who established the notion of slovene contemporary dance, virtually out of nothing in 1990. three years later he established the international dance company en-knap in leuven, belgium during work with the klapstuk festival- and in 1994 the group relocated to ljubljana, where he further developed en-knap productions. after several years of project-based work through his production house, kovač founded the international dance company enknapgroup, which became the first permanent ensemble for contemporary dance in slovenia, and the beginnings of a repertoire-based company. en-knap productions was later entrusted as management of the španski borci cultural centre in ljubljana, where iztok kovač is the artistic director and programmer of the national and international programme. under his artistic direction and pedagogical work, his opus includes the production of over thirty projects and six dance films. for over two decades en-knap has introduced and established its own aesthetics and trademark inside the european dance scene, and continues to acquire investment interests from acclaimed co-producers. iztok kovač continues to receive prominent national and international awards.

helder seabra originally from portugal, helder seabra received his training at ginasiano and later at p.a.r.t.s. in belgium. in the last 12 years he worked for both ultima vez under wim vandekeybus and eastman under sidi larbi cherkaoui, as a performer, assistant choreographer and teacher for local and international assignments. through the development of his own artistic practice and in order to channel his previous experiences, helder founded helka vzw in 2013; this allowed him to further explore the full potential of the body & mind and investigate different forms of dialogue through collaboration. helka vzw has become a platform through which helder creates, performs and teaches on an (inter)national scale.